How to Fight a Gun with a Bare Hand / first published by Ladyscumbag.com
“for me for me for me for me for me, for him, for us.”
Davie-Blue
Before you open your eyes in the morning hold a sacred
space for yourself. For this life. For the water that bleeds
inside you. For this offering you can only give yourself that
no one can steal from your open hands. May you never
have to forgive anyone but yourself.
Imagine the hand of a sixteen-year-old. No gender
assigned.Imagine the size of the palm, the length of the
fingers, the shape of the nails. Imagine the strength of an
able bodied hand. Imagine the sensors of touch and pain.
Imagine the tiny blood vessels inside the hand. Imagine that
hand slapping your face.
How did your body react? Did you stand still or begin to
walk backwards? Did your face move? Are you sensing
shock? Is your heart beating faster? How did your psyche
react? Was it pleasurable or painful? Was it shameful?
honorable? humiliating? Was it an act of love or war?
Was it both? Do you want more?
Imagine a soldier. No gender assigned. Imagine the boots
on the feet, the uniform, the belt. Imagine the heaviness of
the vest on the torso and back. Imagine the helmet on the
head. Imagine the weapons in the pockets. Imagine the gun
hanging from the shoulder. Imagine the hand on the
trigger. Imagine that soldier walking into your home.
How did your body react? Did you stand still or begin to
walk backwards? Did your face move? Are you sensing
shock? Is your heart beating faster? How did your psyche
react? Was it pleasurable or painful? Was it shameful?
honorable? humiliating? Was it an act of love or war?
Was it both? Do you want more?
“Our childhood wars have aged us but it is the absence of
change which will destroy us”
Audre Lorde
Dear Ahed Tamimi,
I will not speak about the blindness. I will not give space
for the hate that allows them to see only the soldier.
I will not repeat the nicknames you have been given or
the way they chose to describe you. I will not name the
voices of patriarchy, oppression and racism that try to
define you. I will not give voice to what they want to do
to you in darkness. I will not rewrite the graffiti under
your name. I will not describe the binaries they are trying
to place upon you. I will not speak for you.
Dear Anne Frank,
I will not speak about the blindness. I will not give space
for the hate that allows them to see only the soldier.
I will not repeat the nicknames you have been given or
the way they chose to describe you. I will not name the
voices of patriarchy, oppression and racism that try to
define you. I will not give voice to what they want to do
to you in broad daylight. I will not rewrite the graffiti
under your name. I will not describe the binaries they
are trying to place upon you. I will not speak for you.
Anne Frank would have immediately been shot for
slapping an SS soldier.
Ahed Tamimi lived another day after slapping an
IDF1 soldier.
We cannot erase an evil by comparing it to another one.
The 70-year-old leftist poet Yehonatan Geffen experienced
a backlash for a poem he wrote on social media. In it he
compares Ahed Tamimi to Anne Frank, Hannah Szenes and
Joan of Arc. After being criticized and threatened to be
banned by Minister of Culture Miri Regev and Defense
Minister Avigdor Lieberman, he was quick to apologize.
How fortunate for the israeli government that they only
had one voice of resistance to publicly censor in this
monstrous occupation industrial complex. Mister Geffen
I am angry with you. I am angry at your audacity to
apologize so quickly and even more angry at the way
you describe Ahed Tamimi in your poem. Your apology
is a luxury and, even in your caring, you have diminished
her into an object of your gaze.
These men, and their words.
We were never your witches or your whores.
We were never your girls
We were never yours to begin with.
Our blood. Our lucidity. Our roars. Our saltiness.
Our voyages. Our moons. Our tongues. Our intuitions.
Our lineages. Our fantasies. Our crafts. Our freedom.
“Yes this is a witch hunt. I am a witch and I'm hunting you.”
Protest sign seen at the Women’s March, Los Angeles, 2018
Dear iDF soldier,
Your name is being protected from the public, but I know
you and you know me. You are described in honorable
terms, as a hero; how proud they are of your restraint and
composure. Yes, we have the most humane army in the
world! Yes! Yes! Yes!
This blindness is sickening and I wonder if you're starting
to feel the nausea, it might be too soon for you,
I understand, you killed a part of yourself to view another
as an inferior other, to perpetuate the trauma. You offered
the ultimate sacrifice we were brainwashed to desire.
You made it. Are you tired now, let me hold you, come lie
down. Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh,
shhhh, shhhh, shhhh…
It will probably take a few more years for you to realize
your complicity, your crimes. There’s a reason why they
enlist you before you can own your own thoughts.
Don’t feel shame, most of us have been exactly where you
stand. Your parents are holding you tight when you come
through the door, food waiting for your lips, warm bubbles
waiting for your dirt, clean sheets waiting for your growing
body, your friends are buying the beers, you can even
smoke now in front of your parents, you earned this
freedom. How do you expect anyone in your family to look
you in the eye and tell you about the blood on your hands,
if they do that the blood will start running from their hands.
Can you imagine the flow? Your home will submerge.
Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh,
shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh…
Lie down, my soldier, lie down. Tremble on the ground
swaying from crime to crime, tremble, gently, behold your
complicity my love. Lick my expat milk as I drown your
shame. Watch as every single truth crumbles into
unlearning. Remember my face revealing your face,
the shade of the mirror breaking on your fragile skin, the
touch of something you can’t quite feel, yet by holding it
tight, you become. Lie down my soldier lie down, let me
remind you about The Green Line2.
Let’s count the steps, let’s try and walk from The Green Line
to Ahed Tamimi’s family home in Nabi Saleh. Every step we
take towards the village is another step on stolen land,
another step on a land we rule by force and occupation,
another step into this crime we call defense and protection.
On December 15th, 2017 you were on a mission. Most of
your missions in the village are to intimidate or, in the
language of the iDF, to create a sense of persecution.
Your mission is to remind your occupiers of the cage we
created for them, of the force of punishment, you are a
walking reminder of the barriers and consequences in
the fight for freedom.
Let me ask you about the slap. As you walked into
Ahed Tamimi’s family home did you know that her
fifteen-year-old cousin was comatose in a hospital bed
after being shot in the head by a rubber bullet aimed
by one of your friends? As she was slapping your cheek
what were the forces that pushed you away? Were you
thinking about your mom? Your general? Your dad?
Your comrade? Your boyfriend? Your battalion?
Your girlfriend? Your commander? Your best friend?
Would you have reacted differently if the gender of
the 16-year-old human who slapped your face was
different? I believe that camera or no camera you
would have locked their hands right there and then.
Do you agree?
“This can, by the way, constitute a disposition of humility and
generosity alike: I will need to be forgiven for what I cannot have
fully known, and I will be under a similar obligation to offer
forgiveness to others, who are also constitute in partial opacity to
themselves.”
Judith Butler
Dear western media,
If Ahed Tamimi was a different gender would I even
know her name?
If Ahed Tamimi covered her blonde hair would you
show me her face?
We are laboring and crafting our own tools, heeding
the words of Audre Lorde: “For the master’s tools will never
dismantle the master’s house” but you still hold the rusty,
bloody tools of the master. The tools of patriarchy,
oppression, racism and objectification are the tools at play
in making Ahed Tamimi’s voice of resistance heard across
oceans and seas. The only way to be heard by you is to
create an armor of your liking so you can sell your ink,
your radio waves, your scrolling screens. What does that
mean about the voices you choose to ignore for the armors
they hold? Should we all be wearing blonde curly wigs if
we want our messages to be heard?
There are currently more than 350 Palestinian children in
israeli prisons and detention centers, how many more
names do you know? How many more stories will you tell
us about? I do not blame you more than I blame myself,
I want us all to feel the heaviness of the responsibility,
to understand what is at stake here.
On February 13th Ahed Tamimi was brought into an
israeli courtroom after being locked up for 57 days in an
israeli jail. The first ruling the judge Lt. Col. Menachem
Lieberman made was to lock your cameras, your pens,
and your eyes outside. Neither one of us can witness the
crime. The judge said “it will be in the minor’s best interest
to have only her lawyers and family present.” Western
media,I want you to find a way to ask Ahed Tamimi what
would be in her best interest and report back to us.
“Just because you believe in self-defense doesn’t mean you let
yourself be sucked into defending yourself on the enemy’s terms.”
Assata Shakur
Dear israeli,
Tell me something sincere, tell me about your nights, tell
me about your fears, please, tell me about your dreams.
I know that Iv’e placed you in an uncomfortable situation
and you may want to scream at me. I know that facing our
crimes is brutally painful. But I want you to know how
grateful I am that you are still reading my words, that you
haven’t left me paragraphs ago, that you are still here
with me. Thank you for pushing through these ideas with
me. And for the next minute I want you to shout and
scream. I will hold this space for you.
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. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
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. . . . . . . . . .
I recognize your screams, they do not scare me, I used to
shut people up using my voice too. This aggression we
speak from can be released, we can be kinder to one
another, we can participate in this vulnerable act of
listening.
Imagine the birth of a human being. Imagine feeding them,
holding them, washing them. Imagine protecting them,
disciplining them. Imagine teaching them right and wrong.
Imagine educating them about the trauma of their history,
about the trauma of their present. Imagine teaching them
to fight with you, to resist with you, to protest next to you.
Imagine explaining to them how to avoid rubber bullets,
how to protect their mouth and eyes from gas, how to run
away from the aiming barrels. Imagine fighting for a
homeland you keep losing more and more of, imagine
seeing how just like you they lose their freedom of
movement, their freedom of speech, their freedom
to be. Imagine explaining to them what it means to be
occupied on their own land. Imagine what it will take
for you to risk their lives for the sake of freedom.
Imagine standing in your home watching them fight
a gun with a bare hand, when the only weapon you
have in yours is a camera phone3.
“Some knowledge lies deep down at the bottom of your soul.
In your greatest depths. This knowledge is passed on.
A heritage. Otherwise, would you call it “a burden”? You know
what crimes have been committed in your name, or with your
complicity. It’s not a memory that is immediately conscious.
It is diffuse. It lies dormant.”
Houria Bouteldja
Before you close your eyes at night hold a sacred space for
someone other than yourself. For a life. For the water that
bleeds inside all of us. For this offering that everyone can
share from your open hands. May you never have to forgive
anyone but yourself.
We can approve or condemn intersection weaving
between survivors, the point is bigger than a headline.
The point is that we are all complicit in whats happening
right here right now, we are accountable for every piece
of suffering in the world, and all of our hands are chained.
The ripple effect will shake our chains, will reach all of us
simultaneously, lovingly. There is an us that includes all
of us and its on us to discover it. Our struggles are
different, our privileges are incomparable, and our
histories are important to remember and retell but not
to relive. Michelle Dizon asks us “to always ask the
temporal question of what stakes our work with
history has for the future.”
We should not allow the pain of our origins to prevent us
from recognizing the pain we are causing. Only in this dual
understanding can we change the present and thereby
change the outcome, forgive ourselves and become better
than our wounds.
1 IDF - Israeli Defense Forces
2 The Green Line is the Armistice border line, drawn out in the 1949 Armistice agreements between Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. The Green Line served as the border line of Israel until 1967, when the Six-Day War began. Today the Green Line is an elastic concept; the wall was built outside the Green Line and the settlements are continuing to expand and bloom outside of its borders. It is a thread of accountability the Israeli government is deliberately trying to erase from our collective memory. The Green Line has been almost completely removed from the curriculum at schools, and even the Israeli Defense Forces is not educating its soldiers about its history. To provide soldiers with such an education would convey Israel’s defiance of this agreement, perhaps inciting the realization that they are participating in the criminal infrastructure of the occupation industrial complex.Without this knowledge, most IDF soldiers are brainwashed to believe that they are protecting land rightfully given to them by the UN, land which it is their duty to defend. It is characterized as a profound and necessary sacrifice. The Israeli Defense Forces are currently maintaining more than a hundred checkpoints outside, inside, and along the Green Line. Thirty of those checkpoints are permanent and over a hundred thousand Palestinians are forced to cross daily.
3 Nariman Tamimi, Ahed Tamimi’s mother, took the video of Ahed Tamimi slapping the IDF soldier and posted it on social media. After Ahed Tamimi’s arrest her mother came to visit her in jail and got arrested for propaganda. Nariman Tamimi is being held in jail until the end of her proceedings.